


Darling

by Redlance



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Angst, F/F, Season 3 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-29
Updated: 2012-06-21
Packaged: 2017-11-02 17:01:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redlance/pseuds/Redlance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set over the course of the third season and probes deeper into moments we did see, and unearths ones we did not. Eventual 'fix-it' fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. She Came Around

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first of what will hopefully be a 25 part series. It was inspired by Boomwizard's fanmix ‘Darling’ and if you haven’t downloaded, listened and cried gigantic salty tears over it like I have, you should. So go here http://boomwizard.livejournal.com/54909.html and download it. ’ll be writing a ‘drabble’ – and I say that loosely because as you can see from the first part, I surpassed the drabble limit, but some of them might be shorter than this, others will be longer - for each song on the mix, trying to keep in line with the timeline of both the mix and season three, but I think there might be some skipping around in the form of flashforwards/dreams. They’ll be in italics and it should be fairly apparent whether or not it’s a dream or a flash, but I’ll make a note in the chapter somewhere in case. I guess in a way this whole series is kind of a love letter to Boomwizard, whether she wants to receive it or not, because puts so much effort into her mixes and I wanted to say thanks. So, thanks H. Hope some of these at least live up to what was going on in your head.  
> I’m going to try and be fairly punctual with these, but if I fall behind don’t hate me. I have an ending all planned out (the story basically writes itself with the track listing) and this will be a fix-it fix when that final chapter rolls around. So hold on tight, because this will hopefully be a bit of a bumpy ride. ;) 
> 
> Disclaimer: Characters of Warehouse 13 do not belong to me, sadly. I’m just borrowing them for a while, but I’ll put them back once I’m done. Song that inspired this fic is 'She Came Around' by Holiday Parade
> 
> Takes place during season three, so expect spoilers for all episodes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Mrs Frederic brings H.G.’s apparition to the ‘Bering and Sons’ bookshop, Myka reflects.

* * *

She Came Around | Holiday Parade

She came around and cracked the code to my heart  
She broke me at the seams, hell she tore the whole thing apart  
When she came around with fireworks in her eyes

Shes got me going crazy heaven help me sleep at night  
and she came around  
She came around

Give me the heartbreak  
Give me the pain  
Give me your sweet taste and take it away  
Cause I don't need nothing no oh the rest just burned away  
when she came around

* * *

Myka Bering was accustomed to keeping her emotions in check. She was a good agent, and that was what good agents did. They distanced themselves from their feelings in order to focus on the task at hand without becoming embroiled in it on an emotional level. It was part of what made her good at her job. Former job. There wasn't much calling for emotional containment working in a bookshop, although there had been a few customers she'd had to refrain from violently shaking for one reason or another.

                It had been quite the change of pace over the last few months, but she'd almost gotten used to the quiet life of a bookshop employee. Almost. Then Pete and the new guy, Agent Jinks, had come in with Teslas blazing, asking for information about potential artifacts and reminding her just what the 'good old days' had been like. Chasing artifacts, stopping the bad guys and talking down the misunderstood ones. Listening to Claudia and Artie bicker, Pete's exclamations of glee whenever any kind of cookie was in his vicinity; she missed it all. She missed the stupid things, like inventory. A job everyone else seemed to loathe with as much ferocity as one might hate the black plague or small pox, but Myka had always found the task oddly peaceful. Searching, finding, making sure things were in their proper place and if they weren't, returning them to their allotted space. She was kind of a nit-picker, had an eye for detail. Being the daughter of a bookshop owner, she supposed that kind of thing was in her blood. Whether it was artifacts she was dealing with or the great works of literature, it didn't matter. It was ironic really, how she so enjoyed the task but found herself without a place where she felt she herself belonged. Because the Warehouse was no longer that place to her, not anymore. There were too many bad memories and she'd made too many mistakes. She'd put people's lives in danger; put the entire world in danger, because she'd been blinded by someone she'd thought she could trust. Artie had been the only one to see through the rouse. She felt sick, thinking back on how he'd tried so hard to make her see but Myka had just brushed away his warnings with an annoyed dismissiveness. Because she **known** H.G. Or she'd thought she had.

                She thought she'd known a lot of things, and had ended up letting a lot of people down. Emotion had ultimately been her undoing. H.G. had played her, used her, and Myka hadn't seen any of it coming. She wondered whether or not things could have turned out differently. If she'd perhaps just paid more attention, been a little less trusting, maybe she would have seen the signs. But looking back, as Myka found herself so often trying hard not to, she couldn't find them. Maybe there were little things that if she thought about hard enough she'd find a correlation, but nothing significant. Nothing at all that would have changed the outcome. But she tried not to dwell on the past. It was done, over. She took every emotional attachment she had to the world she no longer belonged in and stuffed them into a bottle, corking it tightly and then put it on a shelf to forget about. She’d been doing so well, too.

And then Mrs Frederic had shown up, in that frightening and unexpected way she did, with a smile and words of thanks, and the notion that she had someone she wanted Myka to speak with. And then, there was Helena. Only it wasn't **Helena** , because that name belonged to someone Myka suspected didn't exist. Had never existed. In an instant, that bottle had come uncorked and everything she’d tried to keep away came spilling out. She'd grown scared and angry, without consciously knowing why, demanding to know why the older woman would have brought H.G., of all people, to see her. Didn't she know how hard that would be for Myka? In a moment of quiet reflection, Myka had surmised that Mrs Frederic couldn't possibly have known just how deeply seeing the British former-agent would affect her; she herself hadn't known until the woman was standing in front of her. Or, she amended, being projected in front of her. And it wasn’t until long after H.G.’s projection had vanished that Myka conjured up the expression of disappointment and shame that had clouded the inventor’s face upon hearing Myka’s outburst. But what had H.G. expected?

                They’d been alone then. There’d been a smile that came nowhere close to reaching dark eyes and Myka had been quietly struck at the vision before her. She didn't know this person, this reflection, who stood as tall as her chagrin and shame would allow. While she bore a resemblance to the striking woman who'd sought Myka out and confessed hard truths about her past, and also the villainess who'd stood at Yellowstone and tried to end the world, she was neither. Myka had deduced that the closest likeness would have to be to the woman who'd fallen to her knees and wept when she'd been unable to complete her task. The woman who'd been unable to pull the trigger, unable to kill Myka. There was a thread of that woman in the vision before her, a thread of all three versions of that person, but there was so much that Myka did not recognise. Until she spoke. And then she'd been Helena, speaking Myka’s name, and the wounds were still far too raw for that. So she’d allowed her bitterness to grip her, spill its venom past her lips.

                She'd meant it when she'd said that she wasn't angry at the Warehouse. She hadn't left because of what it had turned her life into; she'd left because of what she'd allowed to happen. She'd put people she cared dearly for in danger; she'd risked the life of her partner. Again. This time, the outcome had been different, but the other possible endings sometimes kept her awake at night. Myka may have been accustomed to keeping her emotions in check, but when Sam had been killed, she'd lost it. She'd become obsessed with hunting down his killer and it had driven her to more than distraction. Grief and anger had consumed her, and she'd let it. Because that was easier to deal with, to focus on, than the realisation that he was gone. And he was never coming back.

                But she wouldn't do that with H.G. While it was true that Myka was angry and confused, while she felt a sense of betrayal that was almost as powerful as her grief over losing Sam had been, she didn't hate H.G. Myka didn't think she possessed that particular ability, though it had taken seeing the other woman to really come to terms with that. Because Myka had every right to hate her. But the vision that had disappeared before her very eyes? She couldn't hate that person. Not when it was obvious that she was in so much pain.

                Because it came down to one thing, when the dust settled and the gauntlets had been picked back up. Grief. Unmatched and uncontrollable.

                Mrs Frederic was an incredibly intelligent lady. She knew things, could see things that others could not. But as Myka ambled through the stacks to the far end of the shop, a battered book held tightly in the hand that swung gently at her side, she wondered how Mrs Frederic had known that H.G. would be the key. Artie had tried, Claudia too, and Pete had begged her to come back, but she’d remained with her feet firmly planted in the world of second hand books. Until today. Helena's words had penetrated on a level no one else's had. Because with Helena, everything meant **more**. Words of advice and encouragement, acts of betrayal. Everything.

                She slumped into the armchair in the corner of the alcove and curled her legs beneath her. Dropping her eyes to the book in her lap, she traced the cover with her fingertips, outlining the letters that made up the title. She'd been avoiding it, Myka wasn't dense enough to not realise that sad fact, but after the events of the day, after what H.G. had said, she was resigned to ending the marathon it felt like she'd been running.

                The book had been given to her by her father and she’d read it more times than she could count, though only a few since meeting its author and not once since the last time Myka had seen her. The hardback cover of ‘The Time Machine’ rested against her thighs, gazing up at her like an old friend she’d lost contact with and was no longer quite sure how to interact with. But things long practised are often easily remembered, and Myka flipped the book open to its title page with the pad of her index finger, taking a breath as she did and holding it.

                _Myka,_

_Take heed; time waits for no one. We are but pawns being forced to move alongside it, allowing time to lead us where it sees fit, though there are precious moments where we are able to choose certain paths. I wish to thank you for allowing ours to cross._

_Your friend,_

_H. G. Wells._

                She released the breath and it shook its release. Myka had been quite outwardly content with her life over the past few months, hiding from her feelings among the stacks and dusty old books, content to keep her emotions locked tightly away; as she’d been trained to do. And then, Helena. And all codes had been cracked, the seams of her heart pulled apart, loosing emotion into her world once more.

                Sighing with a quiet finality, Myka carefully turned the pages of the book until she arrived at the first chapter. And felt it new all over again. 


	2. Broadcast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As hard as Myka might try to deny her fate, H.G’s words haunt her. Back at the Warehouse, she reflects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Characters of Warehouse 13 do not belong to me, sadly. I’m just borrowing them for a while, but I’ll put them back once I’m done. The song that inspired this fic is ‘Broadcast’ by Meese.
> 
> A/N: Sorry about the funky formatting. The HTML is refusing to work for some reason. Hope it's not too distracting!

 

* * *

**2\. Broadcast | Meese**   

 

It hadn’t been a hard decision in the end, or much of a decision at all really. Helena’s words had made sure of that. They’d followed her for days as she tried to avoid thinking about them, despite the plea that the inventor had voiced just before Mrs Frederic had spirited her away to locations unknown.

They found her as she sat among piles of dusty old books, flipping through the pages of the one she held in her hands. The surrounded her on all sides, like some great and impenetrable wall of literature; a physical manifestation of the thing she’d tried so hard to create as a child. A barrier between worlds real and imagined.

They’d found her as she sat across from her father at the kitchen table, him reading the newspaper, her remembering what breakfast had been like at Leena’s.

They’d found her hiding between the stacks and they’d found her out grocery shopping with her mother.

There was, it seemed, no escaping them.

_“Hate can so easily turn into fear.”_

And as much as she’d denied a hatred for the Warehouse itself, she couldn’t ignore the notion that fear might actually play a part in her unwillingness to return. Fear of the reminders that both the Warehouse and Leena’s would undoubtedly hold, fear of what her former teammates might say; that they might judge her. She was afraid of what they wouldn’t say, what she’d see in their eyes. Yes, Myka was afraid.

_“Don’t walk away from your truth."_

But Helena’s words refused to leave her. They resounded inside her mind, like a looped broadcast she couldn’t shut off, driving her further toward her undeniable truth.

The Warehouse was where she belonged.

**********

_"So, what's it like?" Myka stood in the open doorway of the room and rested her shoulder against the frame, eyes trailing over the woman stretched out on the bed before her. Helena glanced up from the paper she was scribbling notes on and met her gaze with a look of curious confusion._

_"Beg pardon?" Myka's lips curved slowly into a smile._

_"Being back at the Warehouse. Being part of a team again." H.G. set her pencil and paper down beside her._

_"Not at all as I'd imagined." She confessed, lips drawn into a tight line that made Myka's stomach churn unexpectedly and her eyebrows knit together. She unconsciously toed the threshold of the door, wanting to wait for an invitation but eventually not being able to fight the urge and so she crossed it, stepping into the room. Helena's smile slid so effortlessly onto her face. "There's rather a lot more to be rediscovered than I'd expected." Her words made Myka stall in the centre of the room, concern slipping from her face to turn it blank for a second. H.G.'s smile turned teasing and Myka's heart started to thud to a different beat, even as she lifted to point a finger threateningly in the inventor's direction._

_"You can't do that." She said sternly, though her smile undermined the warning. "You can't make me worry that you hate it here, because that's… well. It's mean." Her reasoning was poor and left a lot to be desired, but Helena's tinkling laughter soothed the burn of failure._

_"Ah yes, of course. Can't make the person solely responsible for my return worry she did the wrong thing." Myka made a face, crinkling her nose at the implication, and then glanced around the sparsely furnished room a little sheepishly as Helena’s short-lived humour disappeared from her face. "I must admit," her thickly accented words pulled Myka eyes back to thoughtful brown ones, "that while my presence here is very blatantly unwelcomed by some, your acceptance Myka…" she stalled, gaze dropping to the hands resting in her lap for a moment as the taller woman watched her with a slight frown marring her features. "And your tireless attempts to make me feel as though I belong mean a great deal to me." Their eyes met once more and Myka’s lips curved upwards. "I fear I may never find a way in which to repay you for that." Myka tilted her head, a look that Helena could not quite discern settling upon her face._

_"You don't need to repay me for anything, Helena." She finally said, her heart forming the words that spilled from her lips like reverent worship. "You belong here." There came a moment of silence during which they did little more than breathe and look at one another. Helena's gaze felt heavy where it lay upon her, putting an invisible pressure on her chest, and she could feel the static lingering in the air between them. She brushed it away along with the hair from her face and found she had to force the smile into returning to her face. “To suffer ‘The Wrath of Artie’ with the rest of us.” Uncertain humour broke the tension and the inventor’s lips twitched at the corners._

_“A prospect as frightening as death itself.” Helena mused wryly and Myka dismissed the thought with a wave of her head._

_“We’re Warehouse agents,” she reminded the woman across from her, “it’s a matter of life and death on a daily basis for us.”_

~

The memory came with all the clarity of a dream, leaving Myka to wonder in those early waking moments whether or not it had ever actually happened; H.G. being reinstated as an agent, only to betray them all in an act of unbridled grief. But as the unrelenting sunlight streamed in through her bedroom window, the irrefutable knowledge that yes, it had indeed all happened settled over her. And still the memory lingered, growing clearer instead of fading away as dreams so often did.

It all seemed so much more raw then, in her bedroom at Leena’s, as she lay awake with the knowledge that the Warehouse was only a few minutes’ drive away and awaiting her official return to work as an agent under it. With remnants of that conversation still ringing in her ears, Myka breathed a sigh and wondered what it was going to be like to be part of a team again. Back in the thick of things, back in the line of fire.

_“The world is such a scary place. The most innocent objects can cause destruction.”_

**********

It was a stupid thing to worry about and pointless to get upset over. It was just a chair, or the lack thereof, she supposed. But it was a painful, knife-to-the-gut reminder of how things had changed. That she’d been gone; why she’d left. That the Warehouse had found a way to go on without her. And it was always hard to find out that you needed something more than it needed you. But Claudia had swooped in to save the day, and a potential mental breakdown, with thoroughly stomach-turning words that she’d still managed to find comforting despite the ugly image it planted at the forefront of her mind.

Then there had been the familiar presence of a manila folder in her grip and talk of seemingly innocent people having near brushes with death, and Pete offering up a less than pleasing visual of half-chewed food that she’d found she was unable to hold back a smile at, and things felt almost normal. She was pleased to realise that she was still fluent in ‘Pete-speak’, but her knack for reading her partner like an open book had also remained intact and she could tell he was trying too hard. There was something just a little off about his jovial playfulness, but she didn’t push. The months away had left her a little uncertain as to what would happen if she did.

So Myka lost herself in the mission, content to let Pete tell her that things were fine between them and not push him, even though it was obvious that they weren’t. Because honestly, she didn’t know if she was ready yet. To face the guilt, the shame her actions had caused. She’d hurt Pete by leaving and the fact that she’d done so without even saying goodbye had only poured salt into the wound. Talking to his younger self had made that abundantly clear and it made her feel worse than she already did.

Staring at the former airline pilot as he concentrated on perfecting the sun he was colouring, Myka’s mind had turned dark. As scary as the effects of this particular artifact were, she couldn’t help but wonder, just for a second, what it would be like to be rid of certain memories. To find peace in their nonexistence. But the thought was a dangerous one and she pulled herself back from it, a little shaken when she realised she’d been going through the Warehouse inventory in her brain and searching her mental catalogue for an artifact capable of such selective erasing.

It felt good to be back in the field, solving problems, helping people. The closest she’d gotten to that back home, Pete’s impromptu drop-in notwithstanding, had been aiding her mother with the crossword in the Sunday morning paper or helping a customer find a particular book they were looking for. It hadn’t been boring; Myka would never find boredom lingering anywhere near a place so filled will books, but it had been quite the change from what she was used to. At the Warehouse, even the jobs considered most menial; cleaning, inventory, even they had their dangers. Back at ‘Bering and Sons’ the only real danger had been the threat of unwittingly walking face first into an argument with her father, though things had definitely improved on that front since his near death-by-artifact experience. But that place wasn’t home anymore. No, she’d turned her back on the place she called home. The people she now called family.

_“Don’t walk away from your truth.”_

Myka Bering had never run away from anything in her life. Not bullies, not the chauvinistic pigs that had given her a hard time when she’d first started working for Dickenson. She hadn’t run away from Denver. And then, there was Helena. Who’d swept in like a tornado of beauty and destruction and rearranged every single building block that Myka had spent years fastidiously setting into place. Helena, who’d come along to wax poetically about how the Warehouse was her only tie to this strange new world she’d found herself in and how all she’d wanted was to find a place where she felt as though she belonged.

The Warehouse had been that for Myka. Her sanctuary, her happiest place, and H.G. had ripped her from it. She’d had a hundred years cast in bronze to plot her revenge on the world and she’d gone through Myka in order to carry it out. H.G. had used her. Plied her with words of friendship and talk of literature and missions gone awry. They’d caught themselves, on countless occasions, in conversations that had drifted into the early hours of the morning before either woman had realised the time. Looking back, Myka still couldn’t find any lies to see through. H.G. had been meticulous in crafting her deceits.  Had it all been part of the plan? Nothing more than an attempt to win Myka’s trust, her confidence?

Myka had always been someone with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Even as a child, questions poured from her at every available opportunity and years later she wasn’t entirely sure how she hadn’t driven her parents insane with all her quandaries. It was no surprise that now, during one of the darkest moments of her life, her questions had become innumerable. Still, they could all basically be traced back to the same single, gnarled root: had any of it been real?

She remembered the fierce pounding of her heart when her eyes had first caught sight of H.G., her projection. She remembered the fear she felt, the way that the hand of anxiety seemed to reach into her stomach and fist her insides into its palm. Seeing Helena brought all of those carefully subdued emotions rushing to the surface. All the anger, the pain, the piercing throb of her betrayal. But she also remembered the way Helena had seemed to utterly deflate upon hearing the obvious disdain and distress in Myka’s voice as she’d asked Mrs Frederic why on Earth Helena was there. Though there hadn’t quite been hope in her expression before, Myka’s words had left H.G.’s projection dark.

_“I’m not proud of what happened. But that it drove you away from the Warehouse…”_

The words had seemed genuine, so too had Helena’s forlorn expression as she spoke them. She’d known how much the Warehouse had meant to Myka; they’d talked about it, discussed their pasts and their need to find a new home for hours. But Myka couldn’t help but wonder how honest H.G.’s apparent regret really was. On the surface, it seemed real. Then again, the same could have been said for Helena herself. But again Myka was reminded that the woman who had been projected before her in her father’s bookshop had been so very far removed from the person Myka had thought she’d known, and so her rulebook demanded any calls of judgement be rechecked, even if she had been letting her stringent urge to abide by every law she set for herself slip somewhat since meeting Pete. 

That Helena seemed to be truly repentant for her actions was all well and good, but it didn’t mean anything in the long run. And Myka got the feeling that H.G. knew that. And even though she hated herself a little for being so weak, part of her wanted little more than to crumble before the other woman, tell her that everything was going to be okay and that someday they’d be able to pick up where they’d left off. But it wasn’t that easy and she couldn’t simply lay a second chance out for Helena to snatch up. Because how can you give someone you never really knew a second chance, when that person had never truly been given a first? She’d thought that the bond she and the inventor had formed was a solid one, the threads of their similarities twining overtop of those that were distinctly different from one another. She’d never had a friend quite like Helena. It was painful to realise that she still had not. Their friendship had been built upon fractured foundations, and during moments when painful reflection had been impossible to stave off, regardless of how hard she tried, she’d come to the irrefutable conclusion that she’d never known H.G. Wells. She’d known the woman Helena had claimed to be in Myka presence. And now, during those quiet moments where Myka let herself think of H.G., she wondered whether that person she got to know was the person Helena was now striving to become. She wondered if that mattered.

That person had turned ugly and dark; had pressed the barrel of a gun against Myka’s head. The fact that Helena could not find it in herself to do it was of little solace; Myka had seen a long slender finger tighten on it. Had felt the reflex like a slap to the face. Part of her deep down had been afraid that Helena was going to pull the trigger and she didn’t know if she could ever move passed that.But a thought festered in the back of her mind like a virus, bubbling rage inside the pit of Myka’s stomach; she was more than deserving to hold a grudge, why didn’t she want to?

But her anger was as sturdy as her resolve has become and it gave inevitably gave way to the dull ache of sadness, and Myka would always find herself consumed with the want to see her again. To talk to her, scream at her, to do **something** and have Helena’s face staring back at her. Anything.

Myka had run away in order to try and hold everything together, but all she’d succeeded in doing was forestalling the inevitable. Still, maybe it had been necessary. Maybe she’d needed to leave in order to realise just what those memories she was running from meant to her. Maybe she’d needed to try and forget in order to realise that she didn’t want to. And maybe she needed to be back when she had that revelation, because she didn’t think she could have had any kind of honest breakdown back at ‘Bering and Sons’. Because once Leena’s has grown quiet and the only sound to be heard was the hum of the radiators, then and only then did Myka let herself fall apart.


	3. From Where You Are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still adjusting to being back at the Warehouse, Myka finds reminders of H.G. everywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Characters of Warehouse 13 do not belong to me, sadly. I’m just borrowing them for a while, but I’ll put them back once I’m done. The song that inspired this fic is ‘From Where You Are’ by Lifehouse.  
> A/N: Sorry about the gigantic lapse between chapters. I had very good intentions and then got distracted by... well, the other fics. Hehe. But look! An update. I realised that season four is creeping up rather quickly (though it sure and shit doesn't feel that way) and I want this DONE by the time 4x01 rolls around. So, wish me luck. ;) As always, comments are love, and I adore you for reading.  
> A/N II: This fic series was inspired by Boomwizard’s fanmix ‘Darling’ and if you haven’t downloaded, listened and cried gigantic salty tears over it like I have, you should. [ So go here and download it.](http://boomwizard.livejournal.com/54909.html) Spoilers through season three.

* * *

So far away from where you are  
These miles have torn us worlds apart  
And I miss you, yeah, I miss you  
[…]  
I miss the years that were erased  
I miss the way the sunshine would light up your face  
I miss all the little things  
I never thought that they'd mean everything to me  
Yeah, I miss you and I wish you were here

I feel the beating of your heart  
I see the shadows of your face  
Just know that wherever you are  
Yeah I miss you  
And I wish you were here

* * *

     _Artie was not happy about the current situation. In fact, he was so far from happy and had spent so long that way, he wouldn’t recognise the emotion if it waltz up to him and tickled his overgrown eyebrows. He did not want H.G. Wells anywhere even remotely close to out of his sight, least of all halfway across the globe, and he most definitely did not want Myka being the one to accompany her. Pete would at least keep a suspicious eye or two on her, whereas Myka had already demonstrated that she was more than capable of allowing H.G. free reign when it came to most things. It seemed as though a bond of trust had formed with exceptional ease between the two women and it was one Artie was sure would break the second firm pressure was added. H.G. could not be trusted, that was a fact of which he was certain, and so sending the pair of them out in search of the artifact that had piqued the attention of Claudia’s ‘ping-o-meter’ was the very last thing he wanted to be doing, but he didn’t have much of a choice. Pete had taken advantage of the couple of vacation days he had left over from the previous year and had hopped on a plane to spend some time with his family, and Claudia was up to her safely protected eyeballs in wires and Warehouse schematics, literally unable to move more than three feet in any direction.  
    “You go in, poke around, sniff out the artifact and then-”  
    “Snag, bag and tag.” Myka stood in the hallway of Leena’s, arms folded across her chest and brows knitted together in a frown as she stared at the older man who was clutching a manila folder in a death-grip across from her. “Artie, I’ve done this like a thousand times.” He made a noncommittal noise that came out leaning heavily on the side of disfavour, his eyes flickering towards the woman at Myka’s back.  
    “Yes, well, **you** might have….” He let the sentence trail away to nothing and Myka found herself having to wrestle her annoyance into submission, lest it explode from her in a way that would be far more detrimental than it would be helpful.  
    “Fear not, Arthur.” Thankfully, Helena stepped in to save the day, as she’d been wont to do on occasion. “While I may have been out of commission for a while,” he scoffed, expelling the rude noise loudly from his nose, “my wits are still very much as sharp as ever they were, and I think you’ll find me quite the capable agent.” He didn’t look at her while she spoke, nor once she’d finished and with a gruffly voiced farewell, he disappeared through the doorway that led to the living room. Myka watched him go, finally releasing a heavy sigh after a few moments and turning to face the inventor.  
    “H.G., I’m really sorry about-” With a small, strained smile that Myka could tell was forced, the English agent dismissed the rest of the sentence with a wave of her hand.  
    “Nonsense Myka, you’ve nothing at all to apologise for.” Looking along the length of her jacket, she began to fasten the buttons. “And I must say that I’m not inclined to hold my breath and wait for one from Agent Neilson, as I do rather value being alive at the present moment.” Hesitantly, Myka cracked a smile. “Righty-ho then, are we ready to depart?” And as Helena lifted her eyes once more, Myka felt it flourish. She nodded and Helena reached for the door, twisting the handle and pulling it open. “Ladies first.” She said, stepping backward and gesturing towards the entryway with her free hand.  
    As it turned out, Helena was right, though Myka had never really been in doubt about that. Her proficiency as an agent didn’t appear to have been anywhere close to dulled despite her time out of the field and both her intuition and examination skills were as sharp as tacks, but those things could hardly have come as a surprise. H.G. had been one step ahead of them when Myka and Claudia had been on the hunt for what had turned out to be ‘Godfrid’s spoon’, and she’d beaten them to Dickenson’s office. She’d been there to save Artie’s life in Russia and even going right back to their beginning, she’d hoodwinked both Myka and Pete and they’d ended up stuck to the ceiling of the H.G. Wells museum in London. No, there was no room for doubting Helena’s capabilities.  
    What Myka currently doubted, was the inventor’s sanity. She couldn’t recall ever seeing a grown woman so excited before. It was as if H.G. was channelling the emotions of a five-year-old on their first trip to Disneyland, albeit a fairly restrained, well-mannered child. H.G. wasn’t exactly one for squealing, but Myka had no difficulty picturing what it would be like if she were. She had an incessant need to **touch** things, one that could rival even Pete’s, and the exuberance with which she dove headfirst into every clue and every lead they found was as endearing as it was frustrating. Myka couldn’t help but wonder if H.G. had always behaved like this or if the excitement was down to her just enjoying being back on the artifact hunt again. Either way, Myka had privately confessed to herself that it was kind of adorable. Helena kept saying things like ‘aces’ and grinning from ear to ear.  
    It wasn’t until they found themselves deep within the bowels of an old dilapidated barn that Myka truly wished she’d brought some kind of leash along.  
    “H.G.!” She said in a harsh whisper, hunching over to peer around the side of some precariously stacked crates and then waved her flashlight about in wide arcs in an attempt to catch the other woman’s shadow. “Can you please stay where I can see you? I don’t to have to explain to the Regents that I lost H.G. Wells.” Helena’s voice came from somewhere ahead and to the left of Myka.  
    “I suspect that, should you misplace me, Arthur would be more than happy to inform the Regents on your behalf. In fact, you’d probably garner some kind of promotion from it.” Myka rolled her eyes but a rueful smile worked its way onto her face as she swivelled the flashlight in the direction that H.G.’s voice had drifted from. The beam of light finally found her, illuminating her form to make her look like some kind of impeccably dressed angel against the darkness, and for a second Myka found herself distracted. However, when she saw a flash of skin against the rusted length of metal Helena was holding, she sobered.  
    “Seriously?” She chastised, waving the flashlight a little erratically. “You’re as bad as Pete!” And that at least earned her a raised eyebrow. “Will you please put your gloves on? We’re not even sure what this thing does yet!” Sighing rather dramatically, H.G. placed the item in her hands down onto the roughly carpentered work bench she stood before and dug into the pocket of her suit jacket. Myka watched the woman sternly as she tugged on a pair of the purple gloves, letting them snap pointedly against her wrists and then levelling the curly-haired agent with a tight smile.  
    “There. Safe as houses.” Swinging her own flashlight around, something shiny caught both the beam and Helena’s attention, and suddenly the Englishwoman was turning and gracefully clambering over the indiscernible objects in her path.  
    “H.G. Wells! You come back here this instant!” Myka hissed, pausing only briefly afterward to consider the words that had just left her before she started making her way after the woman. The sound of richly tinkling laughter floated back to her.  
    “Don’t worry, darling! I shan’t go far.”_

    There could have been an ocean separating them, a universe even because she’d long ago ceased ruling things out, but H.G.’s presence was keenly felt throughout Leena’s, and throughout the Warehouse. There were trinkets and gadgets that had somehow been overlooked during the collection and subsequent removal of the inventor’s personal effects from the bed and breakfast. Impossibly little things to be the only remaining ties to such a large personality, and the first time Myka had come across one she’d felt her heart stop. It had stilled in her chest as if someone had reached out and grasped the pendulum that coerced it into beating. A cool chill had rippled through her, raising goose bumps along her arms, and she’d stood, frozen, staring at it. Silly little thing; it was nothing more than a six inch length of slim piping that had wires protruding from one end and had been fitted with an oblong LED light on the other. Myka had no clue as to what it was for and the notion that she could no longer simply ask sent some unnamed pain through her. She’d taken it to her room and stored it away in the drawer of her bedside table for reasons she didn’t allow herself to think over.  
    That particular day’s reminder came in the form of a pair of goggles. Brown leather, brass eyepieces, lenses that were tinted purple; H.G. had pulled them out of one of her crates that had been shipped to America with the rest of Warehouse 12’s contents, smiling delightedly as if she’d just been reacquainted with an old friend. It was strange, the way that inanimate objects could hold such powerful emotions over a person. But then, Myka reminded herself where she was.  
    Hooking her finger under the adjustable strap that would hold the goggles in place, Myka plucked them from their seat forgotten atop one of the many crates scattered about the Warehouse, and walked the short distance to the end of the aisle. She sat down with her backside pressed against cool concrete, upper body resting against the solid framing of the shelves, and held the goggles in both hands.  
     _“One must always take precautions! Lest a lady loose her eyelashes.”_  
    Myka chuckled at the memory, calling forth an image of H.G. in overalls that were too big for her and brandishing a blowtorch as Claudia looked on in wide-eyed wonder and with more than a little jealousy. Now there was another relationship Myka mourned the loss of. Claudia and H.G. had interacted on numerous occasions, but they’d rarely had moments belonging to just the two of them and Myka couldn’t help but wonder what might have come of it if they had. Both intelligent beyond their years and wily beyond reason, she guessed explosions. Great big ones that would turn Artie’s hair white and have half of the Warehouse covered in a cloud of smoke, but that would ultimately result in some grand and life-changing invention. They would have been brilliant together and Myka felt a pang of loss and longing resound within her.  
    Part of her wanted so badly to hate H.G. for what she’d done, but she found that all she could manage to muster was bitter sorrow. For that need for revenge that the inventor had let consume her, for the years that betrayal had stolen from them. Because Myka had envisioned a future that saw the Englishwoman firmly ensconced in its centre, alongside the rest of her family at the Warehouse, and what Helena had done had robbed them of the chance of that ever coming to fruition. It was thoughts such as those that kept her company on those nights when sleep would not find her, not matter how loud she screamed for it. Nights that saw her lying motionless above the covers of her bed, staring blankly at the ceiling as a single tear finally fought its way free and she tried not to think about where it had all gone so horribly wrong.  
    Myka didn’t hear the approaching footsteps and so Claudia found herself unintentionally sneaking up behind her. The redhead had spotted the long legs of the older woman stretched out beyond the aisle and, pausing for only a second or two, had decided to sate her inquisitive nature. Squeezing a hand into the pocket of her jeans, she rummaged for a moment until her fingertips brushed the item she sought and, grasping, she pulled it free. She closed the distance between them and, leaning against the edge of the shelf Myka was resting against, Claudia bent down to dangle the coin before Myka’s expressionless face.  
    “Penny for them?” Dark hair shifted as the seated woman looked up, wide eyes betraying her surprise, and Claudia offered a half-smile that was welcomed with one of Myka’s own variations.  
    “It would probably take a small mountain to pay for them all.” Claudia waved off the wry warning as she walked around Myka and plopped down against the concrete beside her.  
    “I **am** willing to decimate The Piggybank of Claudia, if I have to.” Myka’s shoulders shook in a burst of silent laughter, but the humour didn’t linger long and shadows crept in to claim her features once more. Claudia wasn’t exactly one to push when it came to the withdrawal of potentially emotional information. It wasn’t that talking about feelings scared her, unless those in question were her own, she was just somewhat unused to handling the discussion of them and the emotions that inevitably came along with that. But this was Myka, one of her best buds, someone she looked up to and admired, and she was bummed. As a friend, it was her duty to relentlessly attempt to cheer the agent up or get her to open up about whatever it was that was obviously bothering her, and the former had already been tried with only short-term results. So she was biting the proverbial bullet. “Take it.” She said, and then dropped the penny into Myka’s lap. Spotting the goggles, she gave a drawn out whistle of her appreciation. “Nice specs, Tex. Where’d you nab these babies from?” Myka offered them to her and Claudia tried to hide her slight salivation as she took them. The tech-wiz ran her thumb along the edge of the brass and then turned the goggles over in her hands.  
    “They were H.G.’s.” And it was so much easier to refer to the woman by her initials. ‘Helena’ had always been Myka’s name for her, and Myka alone with the exception of Artie that one time, but the person who had offered up her name to Myka didn’t exist in her world anymore.  
    “Oh.” Claudia’s hands stilled and she stared down at the goggles for a moment before holding them out for the older agent to retrieve. “You should hang onto them.” A pause and then, tentatively, “I mean, you never know, right?” Myka didn’t reach for them, but her eyes scanned their surface for a few seconds, mind flipping through every memory attached to them that she could find.  
    “You should keep them.” Claudia’s brow knitted together almost instantly, but she didn’t say anything. “I think she’d want them put to use. The ‘genius’ type of use the rest of us can’t really stand up to.” A thought struck Myka then, cold and uncomfortable, and she let out a bark of mirthless laughter as she shook her head. “God, I’m talking about her like she’s dead, not locked up for her crimes against humanity.”  
    “Attempted crimes.” Claudia amended before she could stop herself. She glanced askance at Myka, lips curving upward at the corners. “Sorry, Artie reflex.” At that, a genuine chuckle did find its way past Myka’s lips and she tilted her head back to rest it against the shelf behind them.  
    There was content silence for a moment, one that saw Claudia studying the object in hands with some kind of carefully checked reverence and Myka’s features slowly crease in a way that betrayed her multitude of thoughts, noisy and confusing.  
    “Do you miss her?” Red hair bobbed with the sudden jerking motion of her head as Claudia lifted it to stare at Myka’s profile. The woman’s green-eyed gaze seemed distant as she stared at the aisle across from them, absently worrying her bottom lip. Silently, Claudia carefully weighed the question. Coming from Myka, it meant something very different than it would have had it come from anyone else. From Pete, it would have been a kind of curious accusation, and Artie, not that he’d ever ask such a question in reference to H.G. Wells, would have snapped it even more sourly than usual and then not bothered to give her time to answer. But with Myka, it was another thing entirely. With Myka, H.G. was like thin ice that she kept edging out onto despite the warnings, just waiting to fall through, and maybe she finally had.  
    “Yeah.” Claudia admitted quietly, dropping her gaze and letting her hair fall to curtain her face. The thing about Myka was that, no matter what, she would never bark judgements at you. She’d keep any negative opinion to herself until she had evidence to back up any vocal claim that might need to be made. She was kind hearted though, and didn’t like having negative opinions about anyone. Her emotions were usually rigidly contained, kept beneath the heavy press of iron blankets. Claudia had never seen Myka fall to pieces and suspected that she never would, but she wasn’t under any disillusions; sometimes everyone needed a second to break down. Myka did it behind closed doors, where there was no one else around to perceive her tears as weakness. “I feel like it could have been awesome, you know? I mean, just think of the coronaries we could have given Artie together.” Myka’s lips curved, a light chuckle escaping them as she let her mind momentarily drift. It didn’t do anyone any good to dwell on ‘what if’s. “Before she… before everything went to crap, we even talked about working on some stuff together.” Claudia tilted her head to catch Myka’s gaze. “Can you imagine? Inventing something with H.G. Wells?” She laughed, a quick exhalation of air that puffed out her chest, and rolled her eyes. “Maybe it’s better this way. That we never got around to it, I mean. My head might have exploded from all the awesome.” Myka smiled and then she seemed to quietly gather her strength as she drew in a slow, slightly shaky breath.  
    “She came to see me.” The confession was easier to speak than she’d thought it would be, and Myka had agonised over that. She’d wondered whether or not it even needed to be broached, but the simple fact that she’d seen H.G. after the would-be world-destroyer had been taken away had been eating at her. “At my dad’s bookstore.” Claudia blinked owlishly at her, mouth hanging open as she stared with not a little incredulity, and Myka finally registered how her words must have made things seem. “She wasn’t really **there** , though. It was kind of like,” she paused, worrying her lower lip in an instant spent searching for the correct phrasing, “like a hologram of her. She said that she was being held, but that the Regents had found a way to transport her consciousness.” Claudia raised her eyebrows.  
    “Dude.” And Myka wasn’t sure if the younger woman’s tone betrayed how impressed or how disturbed she was by the notion, but she wasn’t permitted time to ask for clarification. “So… H.G. was the reason you came back?” Myka felt guilt pull at her, like someone had harpooned her heart and was tugging on the rope, attempting to reel in the catch. Because she could hear the thoughts that Claudia wasn’t voicing.  
    “She was a big part of that, yeah. But really she just made me realise that I couldn’t run forever. That if I did, soon enough I’d become afraid of this place, of what it could do to me, and then I’d never be able to come back.” Myka sighed, running her fingers through her hair. “She made me realise that I **wanted** to come back, that I needed to be here.” Allowing the moment to settle, Myka shifted to bump her shoulder against the redhead’s. “That I needed you and Pete, regardless of how much you both drive me crazy.” Claudia scoffed at the underlying allegation and then narrowed her eyes in playful scepticism as Myka added, “Even Artie.” The brunette let her head loll to the side and she gave her friend a grin.  
    “Why’d she break through when no one else could?” And there was no accusation in her voice, only a kind of curiosity that Myka could tell had grown overtime. Like a ball of yarn Claudia was still winding up. It was a question Myka had spent the same amount of time asking herself as she had spent avoiding it.  
     _“We became friends because we’re alike in many ways.”_  
    The words hadn’t been any less true when H.G. had spoken them.  
    “H.G. and I…” she paused, not entirely sure why she’d begun when she had no idea how to give life to the thoughts running rampant through her mind. “There was a lot we had in common, a lot about us that was similar. I guess we kind of formed a bond through that.” Claudia’s eyes flicked over Myka’s profile as the older agent spoke, taking in every distinguishable nuance that painted her face. “I think that maybe it had to be her, because only she could really understand what happened. How it had affected me, altered the way I saw things. It didn’t mean any less coming from you guys,” and she paused again, eyebrows knitting together, “it just meant something different coming from her.”  
    They fell silent for a long moment after that, the omnipresent statically charged hum of the Warehouse a pleasant companion to the quite, and Claudia bided her time. Waited for the right second to tick by and flick the red light to green.  
    “You miss her too.” And it wasn’t a question, just a simple statement of truth that she knew no one else had thought to, or wanted to, draw attention towards despite the irrefutable fact that Myka probably needed to talk about what had happened. She watched as the brunette’s face became clouded, stormy in the face of the conflicting emotions that had been jostled into barrelling towards each other by her words, and then her expression cleared.  
    “Yeah.” And her voice became rough, though not through the threat of oncoming tears, but as if that small announcement had walked hundreds of miles across dry and cracked terrain and soaked up the essence of the land. “But I shouldn’t.” And there it was. The thought she’d been battling with ever since she’d arrived back at the Warehouse and, if she were being perfectly honest, that had plagued her for the months prior to her return. It was a peculiar feeling for Myka, she was someone who was so rarely at odds with her thoughts and it was incredibly disconcerting to feel as though she were at war with part of herself. Beside her, Claudia hefted a sigh and Myka felt the redhead’s shoulders shift with the weight of it.  
    “Look, I know what she did rates, like, a 42 on a one to ten scale of ‘super diabolical evil-doings’ but…” lifting a hand, Claudia fiddled with the bright streak of purple running through her hair, “H.G. got dealt a really crappy hand.” She batted the coloured strip once and then dropped her hand a tad more dramatically than was necessary. “I’m not saying that gives her the right to hold the world hostage, but it does kind of explain why she dropped off the deep end. Why she lied.” Claudia glanced askance at the woman sitting next to her. “And since I’m guessing no one else is going to say this, let me.” Myka turned to look at her more fully. “It’s okay that you miss her.” Shaking her head, Myka sighed.  
    “I’m not even sure who I miss anymore. The person I saw at the bookstore wasn’t the H.G. I’d gotten to know, in the same way that the person at Yellowstone wasn’t her either. It’s like she never even existed. She was like a ghost, Claude.” Pursing her lips, the redhead considered that for a few heartbeats.  
    “Maybe all we’ve seen so far have been fragments of the person she used to be. Before Christina and all the death, and the insanity that life seems to thrive on turning into. Maybe who you saw that day was some distant impression of all of those people finally coming together in a weird symbiosis of unsettled harmony.” Myka shook her head again, snagging the goggles from Claudia’s lap and running her thumb along one of the golden rims.  
    “There are so many answers that I want, that I need, and I think she knows that, but whenever I start picturing us talking about what happened, my reaction is usually a tossup between really pissed off or really annoying bitter grief depending on the day.” A slight smirk lifted the edge of Claudia’s mouth, but it never met her eyes. “And now we’re so far away and I feel like I’m never going to get any kind of closure. And I don’t know how I’m supposed to deal with that.” And there was so much emotion to the statement that Claudia could find only one way to deal with it.  
    “Sorry dude, I don’t think there’s a manual for this kind of emotional drama.” The only way she really knew how, with humour, and it worked. Albeit momentarily, and then Myka’s faint smile vanished beneath sadness that was painted as a beautifully intricate patchwork across the planes of her face.  
    “There’s just so much that I miss, you know?” Distractedly, Claudia nodded. How could she possibly know? “And most of it is stupid stuff like hearing stories about ‘The Daring Adventures of H.G. Wells From Warehouse 12’ or having someone who wouldn’t get all glassy-eyed on me when I transformed into a gigantic book-nerd before their very eyes.” Claudia chuckled.  
    “One of the lesser terrifying were-creatures, so I’m told.” Myka gave her a look that bore a chilled exterior but that was warm at its core. “And I totally don’t think that’s stupid, by the way.” Myka flashed a half-hearted smile and then shrugged. There were many things that she missed, some she dwelled on far too long and others she had yet to properly unearth, but the culmination of them proved to be a heavy burden that she’d been charged to carry and at the very pinnacle of that mountain of regrets and grievances sat the thing that she perhaps missed the most; the years H.G.’s actions had stolen from them. The ‘what if’s and ‘could have been’s. Those things plagued Myka, kept her company on the nights when sleep would not come and the uneven shading of her bedroom ceiling could no longer keep her attention. And perhaps it would have been less tragic had Myka been able to perceive a future in which things had not worked out so wonderfully, had H.G. never been so decimated by her insurmountable grief, but every time she tried to conjure up images of that fabled future, she was met with nothing but visuals of a family, as dysfunctional as if they were truly bound by blood, happy beneath the Warehouse roof.  
    “I miss the way she’d too-cheerfully correct Artie, and how she’d pull apart a control panel in his office and then put it back together in ten seconds flat, but be completely baffled by a laptop.” Claudia chuckled, but Myka’s façade began to crack and all remnants of the redhead’s jovial demeanour evaporated. “I miss just seeing her face…” and even though her breath hitched, tripping over the thought, Claudia knew Myka wouldn’t cry. “And I don’t even know **why**.” And too lost in her exasperation over her inability to understand her own thoughts and feelings, Myka missed the recognition that flashed across Claudia’s face as pieces that had been hovering aimlessly over them finally slotted into place. “God, why did she have to…?” She didn’t finish the question, because she knew there would be no answer waiting at the end of it. “I feel like I’m in so much trouble, Claude.” And the sad truth of the matter was that Myka probably was. And there was nothing any of them could do about it.


	4. In Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Myka wakes, only to go back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Characters of Warehouse 13 do not belong to me, sadly. I’m just borrowing them for a while, but I’ll put them back once I’m done. The song that inspired this fic is ‘In Dreams’ by Winsor Drive.  
> Summary: In which Myka wakes, only to go back to sleep.

* * *

My wondering mind will lead me  
To a place where we only meet in dreams  
And we both surrender ourselves  
Then I wake up, and I go back to sleep

Let me guide your steps  
And I’ll move you in time  
We’ll dance the night away  
If you were my song  
Then I’d melt you with words  
But you’re not, (you’re not)

* * *

    The human brain is a wondrous and complex thing. So much so that even the greatest minds on the planet aren’t even sure how exactly it works and its mysteries only serve to make the thing more fascinating to those that pledge their lives to the study of it. It is what gives us our most basic motor functions and the ability to turn a baser skill into one more finely tuned. It allows us to imagine, to regard the most impossible undertakings as merely impractical for a moment; a miraculous feat when one considers the simple impossibility of trying to accept that five plus five could ever amount to twelve or sixty-three or some other ridiculous number. The brain works in strange and often incomprehensible ways.   
    They – the general ‘they’, that is – say that the human brain possesses the ability to protect itself and the vessel it has been safely nestled inside of. That should some traumatic turn of events transpire or a person should be made aware of something they aren’t yet ready to understand, the brain can simply ignore it. Like pulling a blind down over a window to ignore the tornado raging outside; it was largely ineffective in terms of longevity, but perfectly useful for the time being.   
    Myka had been having the same dream for months, but the memory of it always faded as the first indications of morning teased the edges of her awareness. It would be gone by the time her eyes opened, blinking blearily in the soft light that slipped in through the curtains of her bedroom at Leena’s, or of her room at her parents’. Back before she’d returned home, before Yellowstone, and even before H.G. had been reinstated at the Warehouse. It had, fundamentally, been the same dream, though if she’d been aware of it she would had noticed the subtle changes as time wore on.   
    But to Myka, the nights where her reoccurring dream returned to her were a peaceful undisturbed blackness. She never saw the setting sun, did not recall the face before her or the person speaking in hushed tones and whispering her name.

* * *

_  
As a child, Myka had never been interested in dancing. All the other girls at her school spent a couple of hours after school once a week engaging in either ballet or tap dance lessons, or some variant, but the stage had never called to her. It was too big, too much wide open space and there were always far too many people staring back at her. No, Myka liked her solitude; specifically the kind that could be found in libraries all over the world or between two stacks at the very back of a bookshop. She’d occasionally enjoyed jabbing people with swords too, still did, but rarely achieved the same kind of peace when she was fencing as she did when she was reading. She devoured books; read her favourites until the pages fell out. She deconstructed every sentence and then reassembled them, leaving a part of herself among the words and taking those that meant most to her with her. Which was, more often than not, a great deal of them. She carried the words of long dead men around inside of her to keep her company when no one else would.  
    It seemed somehow fitting that the best friend she’d ever know would turn out to be one of those ‘long dead men’; the brain behind the man that had portrayed himself as H.G. Wells.  
    Standing before a wall of mirrors that stretched from the floor to the ceiling hanging at least another six feet above her head, Myka considered the irony of it all. She’d been a shy, timid bookworm and had been largely friendless because of that. But now, look at where her reading and her studying and her **bookishness** had gotten her. She had friends at the Warehouse, a family. There was Pete, Claudia, Artie, and Leena, even Mrs Fredric to a certain extent, though that particular opinion would never be voiced. There was Helena.   
    Myka blinked at her reflection, seeming to only now realise it was staring back at her. She was draped in the most elegant looking dress she’d ever worn, ever seen anyone wear. It was a dark green that shimmered when she moved and the skirt swelled outward in the way that Victorian dresses tended to. The dress left her arms bare, but she wore elbow-length gloves of a matching shade of green and she lifted a hand to brush her fingers over the necklace resting against her collarbone. Helena’s locket. She dropped her hand. Helena. She was there somewhere, waiting for her. Myka glanced at her wrist to find her watch missing and then turned to scan the painted walls of the room she was in. Moments from history played out across them, hand painted by someone who obviously had honed their skill over many years. There was such precision, such detail. But there was no clock, though there was the feeling of time slipping through her fingers.   
    She moved without conscious thought, wandering from the mirrored room and into a thickly carpeted corridor. The hallway was decorated in various shades of red and accented with golden highlights, and huge portraits hung on the wall to her left and she was flanked on the other side by large windows that allowed light to stream into the walkway. The paintings reminded Myka of those of Rembrandt or perhaps Johannes Vermeer, only she didn’t recognise the people in these paintings. One thing was clear from the decor though; whoever lived here knew how to spend their money.  
    The hallway ended in an open doorway and Myka could see the polished hardwood floor of the room beyond catching the light from the huge arched windows that appeared to line the far wall. She could see no furniture or sign of decoration whatsoever, and the only things that littered the space were the thick beams of early morning sunlight. Crossing the threshold, Myka took a breath, running her fingers along her stomach as if to calm the sudden anxiety she was feeling, and then turned her head to the right.   
    Helena stood toward the centre of the room, gaze downcast and dark hair falling over her shoulder as she glanced at something she was cradling in her hand. Something about her appearance struck Myka as odd and it was only a few seconds before she pinpointed the cause; Helena’s clothes. She was dressed not as Myka realised she’d been expecting, fashion fitting the era of her own, but in more modern attire. Tan coloured dress pants and a form-fitting white shirt open at the collar, accompanied with a vest the same shade as the trousers. Svelte and elegant; entirely Helena, and seeing her, Myka smiled. She felt her feet moving before her mind gave consent and the clicking of her heels on the hardwood caught the inventor’s attention. When their eyes met, Helena’s own beaming grin was as bright as it was breath-taking.   
    “I was beginning to fear you might not come.” It didn’t take long for Myka to close the distance between them and, as she neared, she saw that Helena was holding a pocket watch. The Englishwoman’s smile turned sheepish as she slipped it into the pocket of the vest she was wearing and straightened, clasping her hands behind her back and allowing her posture to slide effortlessly into a stance that seemed to exude elegance and grace. Not for the first time, Myka caught herself wondering how H.G. made it all look so easy.   
    “Have you been waiting long?” She asked, voice echoing in the empty room. Helena’s grin softened to a smile but remained utterly sincere.   
    “An eternity would not be too long to wait for you.” Myka felt herself blush.  
    “Why do you do that?” Helena’s brow furrowed, betraying her confusion, and Myka gestured vaguely with a gloved hand. “Say things like that. Like I mean more to you.” Her explanation did nothing to ease the inventor’s obvious confusion and raven locks swayed as Helena tilted her head.  
    “Don’t you know what you mean to me?” Myka shook her head, suddenly acutely aware of how odd-looking she’d found herself to appear whilst looking into the mirror in that first room. Glancing down the length of the dress, Myka shrugged her shoulders somewhat despondently.  
    “I don’t know what any of this means.” A melodic sigh lifted her gaze and she found H.G. watching her, warmth lingering about her expression.   
    “You need not worry about that now. I have the utmost faith that you shall remember all in due time.” Reaching forward, the inventor extended a hand towards the taller woman and, befuddled, Myka did little else but breathe and stare at the offered limb until she managed to wrangle an understanding from the motion.  
    “I never learned how to dance.” As she spoke the words, Myka had the inexplicable feeling that she’d said all this before. “I never went to any dances at school, and later on it never seemed important. Or necessary.” Myka’s evident bemusement did nothing to stall Helena’s chuckle and the inventor leaned forward, ducking her head and lowering her voice to a level that could easily be considered conspiratorial. She tsked, dark eyes sparkling like diamonds with some private amusement.  
    “That’s what you always say.” Archly raising an eyebrow, Myka let her confusion dissipate with little regard for the lack of effort Helena exerted in order to steal it away; it simply seemed like the natural course of events; to have the other woman ease her worry. So, she smiled again.  
    “How do you usually respond?” She asked, watching as the mischief that was never truly absent returned to dance upon the striking landscape that each perfectly rendered facet of H.G.’s features made up. With a wry and, Myka idly mused, rather devastating smile of her own, Helena slipped her hand into Myka’s, leaving the taller woman with few options but to follow her lead.  
    “Come, let me guide you.” She submitted undecidedly to Helena’s urging, her feet shuffling inelegantly across the hardwood as some part of herself clung to the last vestiges of resistance.  
    “I’m afraid.” A giggle left her, nervous and easily worthy of causing a blush to light her cheeks but Helena continued to regard her with thinly veiled affection that was coloured with traces of perplexity.  
    “Darling, what could you possibly be afraid of?” Helena’s slender fingers were cool as they curled around Myka’s, grip firm and reassuring. “All you need do is take that first,” and with a final encouraging pull, Myka was moving with purpose, “step.” Right into Helena’s waiting arms.  
    It should have surprised her, the ease with which she found her dancing legs, but something about the grace with which they moved across the floor suggested to her that H.G. was in complete control, guiding her. Moving them about the room with a smile so dazzling that it blinded Myka to all else.  
    Her dress twirled as Helena spun her for the first time, making Myka dizzy and light-headed as she found herself pulled back in close against the form leading her.  
    “See?” Warm breath tickled Myka’s cheek as Helena whispered to her. “It’s rather easy, once you find the rhythm.”   
    “Find the rhythm?” Myka echoed. “There isn’t any music.” And good-naturedly, Helena rolled her eyes, never ceasing her movements for a moment.   
    “I don’t think that’s the point.” Myka knitted her brows into a frown, the existence of which was short-lived.  
    “Then what **is** the point?” As Helena’s fingers absently skimmed the top of Myka’s outstretched hand and then intertwined them with the gloved ones beneath her palm, all traces of the frown melted away. Helena smiled wryly at her, inky black tresses swaying with a shake of her head.  
    “You can’t extract questions with such myriad answers from me with such a simple question.” She chuckled then, pulling another smile from Myka. “I’m not so easy.” And Myka couldn’t remember any other statement ringing more true.   
    There was silence then, as endless as their dance seemed to be and ringing clear through the empty room surrounding them. Myka felt her control slip away and gave herself over to the invisible pull that seemed to be unravelling her from the inside.  
    All thoughts, memories and feelings faded to nothing; there was only Helena, the fluidity of their dance and the quietly dying light that stroked their forms as they passed by the windows.   
    And it was the notion that the day had faded so quickly, that she had lost herself so thoroughly in the other woman and their movements that she’d somehow neglected to notice time moving on around them that finally pulled Myka back into a world where things other than the two of them existed. Her feet scuffed noisily against the shining floor and Helena guided them to a gentle stop, though her hands did not shift from their position; one at Myka’s hip, the other still clasping her hand.   
    “It would appear as though our day is at its end.” Myka’s fingers sank into the material of Helena’s vest, fear gripping her suddenly and the inventor’s gaze was soft and remorseful as their eyes met, though Myka could not remember her vision straying at all during their dance.  
    “Stay.” She breathed, feeling an acute pang of loss as Helena’s hand dropped from her own. “Please. Just for one more dance.” Myka would not remember how the dream had played out before. Before Helena’s betrayal had forced the Regents’ hand, before she’d been taken away, before the pain of losing such a valued friend had rendered her unable to remain in the one place that made her happiest.  
    “I can’t, Myka.” Before, Helena had always stayed, unable to refuse Myka anything. There had always been one more dance.  
    “Please.” And before, Myka had had to beg for nothing. Now there was the sting of tears behind her eyes and a crushing weight against her chest. “Don’t leave me.” Helena's eyes were dark and her features drawn by remorse. She shook her head, gaze falling from Myka as she whispered words that went unheard, but the meaning of which were keenly felt.  
    The sun seemed to plummet beyond some far off horizon as Helena turned from her and began walking away. Myka called out to her, but the artificer would not stall, nor turn back. Soon enough, she disappeared through a doorway, leaving Myka alone in the centre of the darkening room. The air turned cold about her, and she shivered. _

* * *

    Waking was never more sudden than it was on the mornings that proceeded those nights that saw her tossing and turning under the heartache of that dream, though Myka would not realise why. She'd go about her early morning ritual the same way she always did, with an underlying feeling that things simply were not 'right'.   
    And would not remember the dream, or be able to decipher its meaning, until it was much too late.


End file.
